2022 Kioxia x AIC Collaboration Program Activity Report

Over a four-week period from December 1-22, 2022 Keio AIC and Kioxia collaborated to hold an idea contest.

Event overview

In this event, students learned about combinatorial optimizsation problems through lectures and group work, and deepened their understanding by applying them to familiar problems. They also went on a field trip to Kioxia’s Yokkaichi Plant to further their understanding about the optimizsation problems and semiconductor manufacturing they learned about at the event.

The lecture covered how Kioxia is working on optimization problems in semiconductor manufacturing, and that optimization problems exist not only in corporate activities, but also in many of our surroundings, even for students. There was also an explanation of a wide range of technical aspects, such as the three elements required to design an optimization problem and the methods used to derive the solution.

In the group work, the students learnt about optimization problems through a familiar subject: making curry. The students were shown that when the number of conditions and variables increases, the problem becomes difficult to complete in one go. In the final presentation, each group found a familiar combinatorial optimization problem and formulated it.
 

Excerpts from the presentation

Group A

Topic:Optimizing Ippon in Kendo　

Group B

Topic: improving efficiency in healthcare through physician scheduling

Group C

Topic: Optimizing dog hotel walks

Group D

Topic: optimizing where and when university students perform tasks

Group E　

Topic: improving efficiency in healthcare through physician scheduling

Group G

Topic: how to schedule courses at university

Comments from participants

• I joined in the workshop with little knowledge of combinatorial optimization, but it was easy to understand and very informative as it gave me a chance to think about it for myself. (2nd year student, Faculty of Science and Technology)
• I didn’t have much of an image of how AI is used in manufacturing, but it was good to be aware of how it works. (2nd year student, Faculty of Science and Technology)
• I had no previous knowledge of semiconductors, but through this course I feel like I have gained an understanding of them. (5th year student, Faculty of Medicine)
• I was able to learn about theory and real-world examples through practical learning, which increased my interest in optimization problems in the real world. (2nd year student, Faculty of Science and Technology)
• It was very refreshing to be able to work in a group with people from different majors. (Doctoral student, Graduate School of Science and Engineering) 

General comments by staff

• It is rare to have a clear problem in the world, and optimization can be carried out by clarifying it and putting it into a form that can be solved.
• I was surprised to see that all six teams chose wildly different and varied optimization targets.
• The part that seemed difficult was how to design the constraints, but such parts are valuable learning opportunities. It might also have been interesting to think about optimization targets by taking inspiration from research that is already underway at Keio.
• Combinatorial optimization means maximizing some objective function. All of the teams in this project had this in mind, and it was interesting to see.

Group picture

Factory tours

The participants visited Kioxia’s Yokkaichi Plant, which is the production base for state-of-the-art memory storage devices. The participants learned various things from people working at the plant, such as the memory manufacturing process and the use of data collected from the manufacturing equipment. Being at the plant made apparent the need to tackle the combinatorial optimization problems learnt about at the event.

Thanks

We would like to thank Mr. Akira Shimoyama, Mr. Tsuyoshi Ito, Mr. Osamu Torii, Mr. Shinji Takihi, Mr. Manpei Karigita, Mr. Hiroyuki Yamada, Mr. Eiji Kurosawa, the Yokkaichi Plant and many others at Kioxia Corporation for their great support.

Keio AIC Coordinators

Takahiro Yakoh, Shigeki Ishikawa, Mari Kobayashi

Student administrators

Aoto Tsuchiya, Ryusei Hotchi

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